Tomorrows

The future never felt closer than it does today. A series of environmental, technological, and social shifts are changing the planet. The Earth resembles a city which keeps on sprawling outwards while other areas are abandoned due to climate change and extreme socio-political conditions. Life in the urban environment is reorganized thanks to intelligent systems constantly processing human and machinic behavior. Artificial ecologies promise to offer solutions to the problems of the ever-growing global population. As diverse images, once belonging to the future, become more and more part of the present, an urge to understand the ongoing phenomena becomes apparent.

Created by the Onassis Cultural Centre-Athens, the Tomorrows exhibition unfolds the multiple aspects the future presents today through the works of artists, architects, and designers. Of course, dealing with the future is not new. Renowned are the visionary architectural proposals of the '60s which addressed the promises of the new networks, and the possibilities of overcoming environmental problems, thanks to the technological advance. The speculative scenarios and research projects of the time aimed to imagine and influence changes towards a desirable future. Nowadays, dealing with the future is once again timely but the proposals coming from the fields of art, design, and architecture, are in a somehow different context. Less in anticipation of tomorrow’s worlds, contemporary narratives rather start from the challenges and the contradictions that shape the images of the future. The current scenarios are exaggerated, unexpected, and often paradoxical, aiming to raise questions, and to provoke discussions. Furthermore, taking into consideration that the future reaches different geographical areas at a different pace, many of today’s hypotheses underline the role of local conditions and needs.